Richard Nixon's infamous "dirty tricks" henchman, the notorious Watergate felon and anti-gay activist Chuck Colson, has died at the age of 80 after lingering for days following a brain hemorrhage.

Charles W. Colson, the Republican political operative who boasted he would “walk over my own grandmother” to ensure the reelection of President Richard M. Nixon and went on to found a worldwide prison fellowship ministry after his conversion to evangelical Christianity, died April 21 Inova Fairfax Hospital. He was 80. Mr. Colson’s reputation as a “dirty tricks artist” overshadowed his achievements as a darkly brilliant political strategist.

He had helped lay the groundwork for the Nixon landslide of November 1972 by appealing to disgruntled Democrats and blue-collar minority voters. A self-described “hatchet man” for Nixon, Mr. Colson compiled the notorious “enemies list” of politicians, journalists and activists perceived as threats to the White House. And most fatefully, he helped orchestrate illegal activities to discredit former Pentagon official Daniel Ellsberg, who was suspected of leaking a top-secret history of the Vietnam War to the New York Times and The Washington Post.

We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right—and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation—to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required.

Earlier this year Colson was named by GLAAD's Commentator Accountability Project as an anti-gay leader whose past should be considered before being invited to speak on LGBT issues in the national media. Colson responded by comparing GLAAD to the terrorists of the Irish Republican Army.